When I wrote about drum rolls at the start of the year, I brought up the enduring confusion regarding what “diddle” is supposed to mean on the drums. Personally, this confusion reached a fever pitch for me years ago while watching a video about book reports made by Ryan Wold of the old SnareScience site. 

Sorry, but I won’t be linking to the website — SnareScience has fallen into disrepair and I’m honestly not sure it’s safe to visit anymore. Thankfully the mantle has more or less between taken by other communities such as r/DrumlineSheets. It’s still a shame, and I do wonder whatever happened to Ryan…

Anyway, this is the video, which also happens to be one of the last things SnareScience ever shared:

The part that made me turn my head a bit comes at the 1:50 mark when Ryan describes a spin on the flam drag as “playing a diddle on the first partial.”

Erm… a flam drag with a diddle on the first partial?

Surely he meant a flam drag with the drag on the first partial. I mean, it’s called that flam drag, not the flam diddle… right?

Okay then, let’s try to clear some of this up.

Double Stroke

A double stroke is pretty straightforward, and I tend to use “double” in lieu of diddle or drag when talking about anything played as RR or LL. It’s the least informative term, but because it’s so broad it’s at least always correct whenever I’m referring to a stroke played as RR or LL.

Diddle

Now, I had always thought that “diddle” was a double that’s specifically the same subdivision as the notes around it. 

Why do I think that? Easy — just think of the paradiddle:

According to the logic of some other drummers, these would be paradiddles:

Which is clearly not the case.

Still, this seems to be a bit controversial; I found an article from about eight years ago explaining that a diddle is a “double-timed double,” while confusingly adding “paradiddles are a combination of singles and doubles, not diddles.” The author makes the case that the paradiddle is just different.

I don’t follow that at all. Again… it’s in the name!

It’s tough to track the history of the word “diddle,” but we know that the word has been in use since at least the 1800s — I’ve brought up The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon from 1688, which is an encyclopedia-like text that discusses “Terms used by Drummers in their drum beating,” including the diddle. The book does not actually explain what a diddle is, although some have speculated that it’s meant to be what we now call a paradiddle.

The Gardner and Lovering manual from 1778 is the oldest in my collection to feature paradiddles, which (unsurprisingly) look a little funny:

In this form, it almost takes on a five-note pattern, but with how archaic these texts are, I’m unsure of the exact interpretation. The Army Drum and Fife Book from 1861 is the first manual I have that has the paradiddle in a more recognizable form (although with an extra accent, an interpretation that has now fallen out of popularity):

None of my old manuals define “diddle.” Some of them, such as Howe’s Fife and Drum Instructor from 1862, explain that the paradiddle (referred to in the text as a padadiddle) “is performed by striking one hard stroke with the right hand, for pad, one with the left, for a, and two quick light stroke with the right, for diddle.” This book writes the paradiddle as even notes, again with two accents:

So, I can’t even begin to know when this paradigm shift occurred wherein “diddle” began to mean “fast double” while ignoring the terminology used for paradiddles. I suspect drum corps is to blame since I most often see drum corps players using diddle in this manner. It probably doesn’t help that drumset players such as myself just use “double” instead.

Drag

Most of the time, when I see someone say diddle, they probably mean drag. But drag is a confusing term, and when many drummers hear “drag,” they probably think of grace notes, perhaps even played buzzed as in the orchestral style. There’s also the “ruff,” which is often used to describe buzzed, orchestral grace note figures longer than a flam (not to be confused with “ruffs” in the sense of short single stroke rolls and embellishments — that’s a separate mess I discussed here).

I think the problem is that we don’t have a way of differentiating between these two counting and notation approaches:

At the right tempo, these two lines would, in essence, sound identical, but they are still different — as a metered stroke, the tremolo slashes would slow down with the tempo, while the timing of the grace notes is always as close as possible to the primary note. 

The PAS rudiment list doesn’t help, as it writes most of the drag licks with grace notes. Nevertheless, tremolo slashes are a totally valid way to notate drags, as evidenced by the way the dragadiddle is written. Again, is the dragadiddle supposed to be the diddleadiddle? Is the flam drag supposed to be the flam diddle?

There is a bit of redundancy, no matter how you slice it. For instance, describing a passage as having “singles and doubles” or simply “mixed stickings” already explains the general sticking — those terms do not imply the existence of any drags or rolls. Since most drummers think of drags as being grace notes, perhaps buzzed, diddle must’ve been used to fill in the blanks.

Conclusion

Okie dokes — wrapping this up, here are my preferred definitions:

• Double: two notes in a row played on the same hand. Easy enough.
• Diddle: a double stroke played at the prevailing subdivision, in the context of changing stickings hand-to-hand, or keeping a lead from a hand. Simply saying double will probably describe the same thing to most drummers.
• Drag (rudimental): an open, fast double played around slower notes, meant as an embellishment. I cannot abide using diddle to describe such an embellishment.
• Double Stroke Roll: two or more sets of fast doubles played one after another. If it’s too slow to sound like a roll, I just call them doubles.

There you have it. I will be taking no questions!